The Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program (CAREC) is a multilateral partnership that promotes economic cooperation and regional integration across Central Asia and its neighbouring regions. It currently includes 11 member countries. Its secretariat is hosted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is also the principal financier of CAREC transport investments. Major projects are frequently co-financed or supported by the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with more recent participation from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
Within CAREC, the notion of “corridor” has evolved and is conceptualised in multiple ways. The first is the six CAREC Multimodal Corridors, articulated in successive transport strategy documents as broad connectivity axes integrating roads, railways, logistics hubs, and border facilities. Alongside these are the CAREC Designated Railway Corridors, which focus more narrowly on rail freight interoperability, operational efficiency, and technical harmonisation across borders. CAREC policy texts also refer to economic corridors and trade facilitation corridors. Importantly, these corridor maps have not been static. The designated railway corridor configurations have undergone revisions over time, reflecting geopolitical shifts, infrastructure re-prioritisation, and the accession of new member countries into CAREC. For the purposes of our atlas, we adopt the multimodal corridor framework as presented in the 2020 edition of the CAREC Transport Strategy 2030 (Asian Development Bank 2020, CAREC Transport Strategy 2030. Manila: ADB).
A methodological challenge in mapping CAREC investments is the absence of a single, fully up-to-date project list. Our method therefore proceeded in three stages. First, we extracted projects directly from the official CAREC website project list. Second, we supplemented this with projects identified in the annexes of the CAREC Transport Strategy 2030 and related updates. Third, we cross-verified the dataset through systematic searches of the project portals of ADB and the World Bank. We have made a deliberate effort to minimise overlaps and double counting. Given the shifts in corridor maps over time, our tagging of projects to specific corridor numbers may not always replicate the original labelling on CAREC websites and in earlier CAREC documents.